Page 2 Visual Communication

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can't get them across, you won't get anywhere.
~ Lee Iacocca

Visual Communication is the ability to understand, to create, and communicate graphically.

Communication

How can I use communication so that my message always is understood clearly?

Humans want to understand others and be understood in return.


The word "communication" is related to the word "common".

Communication is an effort to share something with another person – such as, our knowledge, decisions, and feelings so that we have something in common that will build community.


Our communication can be verbal (with words), non-verbal (without words), or both.


Visuals: Meaningful Messages



Visuals in our daily environment communicate in a variety of forms such as advertisements, photographs, newspapers, magazines, television, film, logos, product labels, signs, digital media on the Internet, comic books, graphic novels, video games, and various types of art.

Interpreting their meaningful message is important.


Migrant Mother


Fig. 4 Courtesy of The History Place/ Dorothea Lange, 1936
Still photographs have the power to change the world.

They tell a story and capture a moment.

Consider Figure 4. This photo taken during the Great Depression, prompted the government to distribute food and supplies to the starving families. 


Vietnam War

Fig. 5 Eddie Adams with his photograph of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan during the Vietnam War 1969. Public Domain. Courtesy of Dutch National Archives via Wikimedia Commons

However, photography, one of the most powerful weapons in the world, can also ruin people's lives.

"The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths. What the photograph didn't say was, "What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day…?" Eddie Adams stated.

His photo of the South Vietnamese Police Chief, Nguyen Ngoc Loan, shooting a Viet Cong prisoner helped bring about the end of the Vietnam war. Viewers saw the General's execution of one man and assumed General Nguyen was a war criminal, who murdered dozens of civilians. People made an instant judgment without knowing the background story, that the man he executed had murdered a family of six children and an eighty year old grandmother.

Afterward, General Nguyen was criticized world-wide: an Australian hospital refused him treatment, he was threatened with deportation from the US, and American people vandalized his restaurant business; based on people’s assumptions from a photograph that ruined General Nguyen’s reputation.


Optical Illusions


Photographs are powerful, but don’t tell the whole story.

Sometimes photographs are deliberately manipulated to tell a story other than the truth. The "Loch Ness Monster" in Figure 7 is an illusion or hoax.

In Figure 7, consider the difference between real and unreal. The camera may never lie, but some people do.


Fig. 7


Fig. 8
In Figure 8, an orange has been digitally altered to look like a glass. However, a viewer's background knowledge of oranges helps him or her determine the image of the orange is inaccurate.

Knowledge helps one make informed decisions.

In visual communication, the viewer cannot always immediately know the background and context—whether historical or cultural—of an image. Therefore, it is important to learn and research relevant information before making an assumption based on a photograph. Finding background information can help you construct an accurate mental picture of the world.

  • Take the time to evaluate the whole picture and/or story in a photograph. 
  • Examine the photo in its historical or cultural context before drawing a conclusion. 


 View  "Photoshop Ethics Video.




View "Optrick" on page 12 in SightLines 8.


  Please contact your teacher if you have questions.